Justin Norris

360Learning

360Learning is the learning platform that combines collaborative tools with the power of an LMS. We empower L&D teams to drive culture and growth through Collaborative Learning.

Director of Marketing and BDR Operations

RevOps FM

I'm the creator and host of RevOps FM - a weekly Masterclass on revenue operations and go-to-market strategy. 

It's my way of thinking out loud about my work and sharing knowledge at scale.

Podcast Creator and Host

Perkuto

As Sr. Director of Solutions Architecture, I lead the architect team within our marketing operations practice at Perkuto and manage a team of seven. My role is to provide leadership and develop innovative solutions and marketing operations best practices.

Clients look to our team to solve their toughest marketing and sales operations challenges. We deliver results using rigorous business and process analysis, a relentless focus on the underlying business goals, and a rare depth of expertise configuring marketing systems.

Sr. Director, Solutions Architecture

Director of Solutions Architecture

As a Solutions Architect, I lead delivery teams in creating end-to-end marketing operations solutions for clients using Marketo and Salesforce and other best-in-class marketing tools.

Marketo Solutions Architect

As a Senior Consultant, I advise on and create end-to-end solutions for clients using Marketo and Salesforce and other best-in-class marketing tools.

Senior Marketo Consultant

ClearFit

I joined ClearFit as the third employee and the first marketing hire, tasked with growing the marketing function, generating demand, and building out the funnel. Our efforts generated thousands of new customers for ClearFit's hiring solution. I wore many hats during this time, and also helped overhaul the product UI, and hire the initial sales/customer success team, implement Marketo and Salesforce, and much more. 

I quickly discovered my love and talent for creating automated marketing, sales, and service systems and began to focus my energies exclusively on marketing automation and CRM. Using these tools we were able to more effectively nurture our prospects, identify our best leads, and effectively scale to thousands of customers - AND increase customer satisfaction - without massive increases in customer service headcount. This contributed to ClearFit experiencing triple digit % increase in customers and revenue during my tenure.

Director of CRM

CGA-Canada (Certified General Accountants Association of Canada)

I worked within the Professional Services team, which is responsible for providing online training and development opportunities to CGAs and other business professionals. 

My responsibilities included:

MARKETING STRATEGY: I managed the marketing function -- from developing the overall marketing strategy in line with organizational objectives down to the hands-on tactical implementation of campaigns.  
- Conduct market research, surveys, and gather customer insights
- Contribute to product strategy and optimize the product mix 
- Build integrated marketing communications programs across online and offline channels
- Manage, monitor, and grow CGA-Canada's professional development brand

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: I led the webcast and video course product lines, developing the overall product strategy and providing guidance on topics, presenters, and curriculum.

Marketing Strategist & Product Developer

Director, Marketing Ops @ 360Learning | Host @ RevOps FM Podcast | Thinking out loud about GTM + operations

I'm a seasoned marketing operations leader with 10+ years experience building high-performing teams.
Through this experience, I've learned what it takes to build marketing ops strategies, systems, and processes that will scale.

MY EXPERTISE:
• GTM operations strategy and roadmaps
• Designing, building, and optimizing Martech stacks
• Designing structure and processes for global remote teams • Data strategy and governance
• Analytics, reporting, KPIs
• Lead routing, management, SLAs, and follow-up
• Multi-channel lead nurturing and ABM
• Lead lifecycle and scoring
• Campaign operations
• Communication and change management

LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE:
• Establish and lead a global ops function supporting marketing / BDR teams across 4 markets (Germany, France, UK, US).
• Provide coaching, training, and leadership to an expert consulting team (~40 people) on marketing operations best practices, with direct responsibility for a team of seven.
• Develop the solutions architecture function and lead the SA team at a marketing technology consulting firm. 

TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE:
• Marketo: 4x Marketo Champion and Marketo Certified Solutions Architect (MCSA)
• Salesforce: seasoned Salesforce administrator, architect-level skillset
• Hubspot Certified
• iPaaS / Enterprise Automation: Workato Gold Partner and 2x conference speaker
• Attribution and Analytics: Bizible (Bizible All Star '17, Pipeline Marketing Award '17), Marketo, Looker, PowerBI • Data management: Ringlead, Clearbit, Cognism, etc.
• Lead routing: Lean Data, Distribution Engine

Director of Marketing Operations

Here’s 50 things that top performers tend to do. 

They're not specific to any job function. 

Most are common-sense—but they aren't always common. 

1. Have an agenda for the meeting. 

2. Recognize when a meeting is a waste of time.  

3. Recognize when an async discussion is off the rails and a meeting will clarify it. 

4. Ask the obvious questions.

5. Know how to listen. 

6. Take notes. 

7. Write the documentation. 

8. Use bullets and headings in writing. 

9. Proofread. 

10. Care about how work is presented.

11. Use a naming convention. 

12. Think about things from a whole-company perspective. 

13. Block time for planning. 

14. Identify top three priorities for the day. 

15. Calendar-block to make sure those priorities get done. 

16. Don’t be reactive to every new email / chat message. 

17. Create a project plan. 

18. Consider future implications.  

19. Continually re-focus attention on the most important things. 

20. Give proactive updates on status and performance. 

21. Check the performance of something after it’s shipped.  

22. Take accountability without equivocation when something goes wrong. 

23. Practice inbox zero. 

24. Manage upward. 

25. Have a clear “story” for the project / team / quarter. 

26. Review KPIs daily. 

27. Recognize when people/teams are out of alignment. 

28. Break down silos. 

29. Build for scale (when it makes sense). 

30. Don’t over-engineer. 

31. Don’t boil the ocean. 

32. Simplify. 

33. Understand root causes. 

34. Ask, “what problem are we trying to solve?”

35. Take ownership of the problem.  

36. Follow the process.

37. Never skip QA. 

38. Have strong opinions, loosely held.  

39. Care about details without getting lost in the weeds. 

40. Respect other people’s time. 

41. Use “cc” judiciously. 

42. Disagree without being disagreeable. 

43. Delegate appropriately. 

44. Be explicit about assumptions. 

45. Recognize that perfect is the enemy of good. 

46. Avoid procrastination. 

47. Be curious about a better way. 

48. Take time to think about it. 

49. Avoid analysis paralysis. 

50. Make other people feel at ease. 

P.S. I don’t claim to be expert-level in all of these yet. Working on it! 

P.P.S. I share more thoughts about how to be an effective operator in my newsletter and podcast for RevOps pros. Signup below 👇 

I think change management is the hardest thing in RevOps 

You can... 

maintain pristine systems 🧹
design streamlined processes ⚙️
identify great optimization opportunities 🚀

But if…

→ salespeople don’t adopt your systems
→ marketers won’t use your process
→ leadership doesn’t support your ideas 

… then none of it matters. 

If you don’t have alignment and buy-in from other people, you don’t succeed.

It's hard because other people aren’t apps that you can debug and optimize. You can’t control what they think and feel. You can only try to influence them as best you can. 

And influencing isn’t always natural for people that are most comfortable with systems, processes, and data. 

THE SOLUTION

Wish I had a simple “works-every-time” trick here, but I don't. It’s ALWAYS hard, and it ALWAYS takes work.

That being said, here's a few things that help. 

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗲❓

If you aren’t answering this question in your messages, you likely won’t get the result you need. 

They need to understand WHY your ask helps them do their job better or is important and impactful for the company. 

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗦𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲

It’s easy to communicate something once and feel like we’ve done our job.

It doesn’t work that way. 

The more complex the change, the more touches are needed. 

3 months out: this change is coming, here’s why
2 months out: the change is coming, reminder here’s why
1 month out: change coming soon, here’s how to get ready
2 weeks out: almost ready for change
…etc. 

It should feel boring and repetitive by the time you’re done. 

𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲

Sometimes change fails due to simple apathy. 

But other times you’ll receive active resistance. 

It can be tempting to brute force your way through this, but it’s usually not the answer. 

People are resistant for a *reason*—a perceived threat or loss of control, a decrease in their ability to perform, etc. 

Some concerns are rooted in a legitimate problem with your plan that you should address. 

All in all, this process tests your ability to be empathetic and speak to people where they are. 

𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲

It’s critical to develop allies and supporters to help you with any significant change. 

I think of this as top-down and bottom-up. 

Top-down: you get on board with leadership and people’s direct managers. They can reinforce those messages in 1-1s and other touchpoints. People usually listen to their manager. 

Bottom-up: leverage feedback from influential ICs on the team early on. Get them bought in so they can be evangelists for change among their peers. 

—--

There's lots more to say here. 

This week, subscribers to my newsletter, “The Effective Operator,” are reading more about how the best operators drive impact through being good at managing change.

Check out the subscribe link below👇 


I had a chat the other day with one of the top sellers in my network. He’s been to President’s Club 5x and regularly achieves 200%+ of quota. 

I asked him how he does it. Here are five takeaways that can help any seller up their game. 

𝟭) 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽

Don’t sit around and wait to hit the inbound lottery or for your SDR to generate meetings. 

The most successful sellers think about everything in terms of their targets and create a path to get there that’s not dependent on anyone else. 

𝟮) 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀

Review open opportunities daily and ask yourself, “what can I do TODAY to advance this deal in any way?” 

This isn’t about pestering or giving the prospect work. 

It’s about short, value-added touches that create relevance and help you stay top of mind—e.g., sending a short resource based on a specific question the person asked in the last meeting.

𝟯) 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲

The best sellers are incredibly efficient with their time. 

Everything you do should be oriented towards either *advancing pipeline* or *creating pipeline*. 

So for example, first thing in the morning—before checking email, chatting on Slack, or scrolling LinkedIn—you work on your open opportunities (see previous point). Knock this out in your first hour. 

Then, any whitespace left in your calendar is for prospecting. 

𝟰) 𝗬𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁

Some people think AEs should focus only on closing. 

But this AE believes in being a lifelong prospector. 

It gives you another lever to pull on if you’re behind on your month or quarter. 

This way you always have that muscle developed—and you are planting seeds that you can add to your forecast in months down the road. 

𝟱) 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀

You’ll win more if you are laser-focused on solving real business problems for the customer, rather than simply closing a deal. 

Great sellers have a genuine curiosity about how to improve their customer’s business and always seek to build long-term relationships. 

—-

These were a few of the lessons from Brian LaManna, Strategic AE at Gong and founder of Closed Won. 

I’ve never been an AE, but I DID spend many years in pre-sales consulting. I’ve been the co-pilot for a few great sellers, and I really wanted to understand what makes them tick. 

Fortunately, Brian is an incredible talent and shares his knowledge very generously. 

We also cover the thorny subject of how sales and RevOps can work together more effectively (and maybe even how to get a seller to update their forecast now and then 😉). 

Check it out below 👇

Last week at #Spryng (great event!) I was part of a roundtable discussion geeking out about growth playbooks.

Demand creation was brought up. And naturally… how we operationalize it became the area of focus for us.

It’s one thing to buy into the philosophy, but a whole other beast when you’re in-house having to walk the talk.

A super timely podcast just dropped on the topic - Sam Kuehnle and Justin Norris crush it. https://lnkd.in/eQacvVsU

HOW do you set expectations and get buy-in, operationalize it, build a process around it, report on it … all the while differentiating yourself and being seen as an innovator in the market.

Great listen!

It’s refreshing to hear practitioners who are deep in the weeds talking through their playbooks and thought processes.

Justin I feel like ‘how to implement demand creation strategies’ makes for a great '3(100?)-part' series 😂 

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